Jimmy Carter, Donald Trump, and What to Do About that China?

Patrick Winn’s post on the Rice Bowl, an Asia-focused blog on Global Post, caught my attention this morning because of its focus on two currently controversial U.S. figures:

China and Donald Trump.

The post touches on the ongoing China problem—how does the U.S. maintain its standards of democracy when a Communist country is our largest foreign creditor?

Good question.

Now, according to an editorial by the Global Times, a China-controlled newspaper, it seems that China has its own opinions on how the U.S. should behave.

Winn gives a nice summary here of the Global Times editorial and links back to the full op-ed. He also has a great link to a different Global Times editorial—this one criticizing China’s blanket use of the term “West,” to describe the United States, Europe and Australia.

There is also a video from Politico in which Donald Trump declares China a threat to the U.S. on Fox News.

Evidently in China’s mind, Donald Trump is a leader in U.S. politics.

It would seem China didn’t get the memo.

While the video is funny and makes light of the suggestion that China would ever declare the Unites States as an enemy, I think it would have been stronger for Winn to briefly examine the compromising position the U.S. puts itself into by being in debt to China.

I am reminded of Jimmy Carter’s boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Quoting a New York Times article, then President Carter said the boycott was necessary to “make clear to the Soviet Union that it cannot trample upon an independent nation and at the same time do business as usual with the rest of the world.”

Now the United States is in Afghanistan and we do plenty of business as usual with China.